Amish Men Help Raise the Rafters :: Day 3 02/10/2012
A week later on Friday, October 8, 2010, a group of Amish men from the community over in Unity, Maine came over to lend us a hand in getting all our rafters up into place. Andrew was planning on using a chainsaw wench to hoist the rafters (these are rafters that he milled out himself with the chainsaw mill, by the way) up onto the ridge pole. However, these Amish men said forget that. We'll just pull them up by hand, so that's what they did. If you feel like all you're looking at is pulling, tugging, and more pulling, that's because it's all they did the whole entire day....pull, tug, and pull again. The kiddos thought this was great fun. They'd ruuuuun from one side, and when that rafter was up, they'd all ruuuuuun to the other side....ready to go again! I had the fun task of having to feed all these hungry men...and kiddos myself on this day. No help from all my wonderful hostesses like I had for the Harvest Party....and in the tiny cramped camper no less. But it all worked out fine and by evening, all the rafters for our roof were silhouetted against another beautiful Fall sunset. Once again we were so incredibly grateful for all the help we received in bringing our log home project along. It was such a great feeling to get to this point! Add Comment Roof Raising & Harvest Party :: Day 2 02/10/2012
This is a slideshow of Day 2, Sunday, October 3, 2010, of our Harvest Party & Roof Raising Weekend. We were camping out in the camper while some of the kiddos slept in tents. Sunday was a bit overcast and cool but by the evening ,we saw our new roof line silhouetted against a beautiful Fall sunset! This was very exciting. We greatly appreciated the fantastic turn-out we had for our little event....not only the muscle-power but the wonderful support, teamwork, and encouragement. We also had a delicious spread with homemade, farm fresh soups, sandwiches, rolls, pickles, and preserves....and of course desserts! Andrew also managed to get one of our huge turkeys butchered and smoked in his rigged-up fridge smoker before the party. The meat came out unbelievably tasty. Stay tuned for Day 3, the following Friday, when some Amish men lend us a hand in getting all those massive rafters up in a day! In Ocober of 2010, we had our first Harvest Party and Roof Raising for the log home we were building ourselves on our 40 acres in Maine. The above is a slide show on Day 1, Saturday, October 2. It took much longer than anticipated to hoist the ridge pole into place...but when it's a ridge pole of those proportions and using only pulleys and man-power, I guess that's to be expected. Actually gettinng a ridge pole up by hand in one day is doing pretty good. Stay tuned for Day 2. The New Settlers 04/02/2010
 What I want to know is this: Where are these people today? They must be in their 50's or 60's by now. Did they disband? Are there still some surviving 'settlements' tucked away somewhere? Did they sell out? Did they somehow mix or morph into the generic 'green' movement that's happening today? If anyone has some insights here, please come forward. We settlers of the next generations need you!  The excerpt below is taken from a book we checked out from the library, Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn. The New Settlers of New Mexico During the cultural revolution of the '60's, many young people with inquiring minds and adventurous spirit set out to create new lives in rural areas of America. New Mexico, with its open spaces, cheap land, and sparse population, drew thousands of new settlers. It was a time of optimism, faith, and yes - drugs - but also a lot of hard work building and repairing adobe houses, raising children, tending animals, and living communally in the psychedelic years. Irwin Klein was a photographer from NY who shot black and white photos with a Leica during five visits of about three months each to NM from 1966-71. he was working on a book he called The New Settlers of New M.exico. Irwin died a tragic death in 1974. Here are excerpts from the introduction to Irwin's book, along with his beautiful photos. This will bring tears to the eyes of many who were there in those years, a time before the harsh realities of life intruded on youthful idealism and gentle optimism.  Though some photographs were shot on communes, most of them are of people living alone, in couples, families, or small groups in the little Spanish-American towns in the backcountry. It is sometimes hard to distinguish between a group of friends who share certain resources and spend a lot of time together and a commune, but I think that a commune has to have a sense of consciously shared responsibilities and probably, a certain formal structure. Most of my subjects live in what I would call settlements rather than communes.  Many of these people are children of the urban middle class who have abandoned the drug ghettos of large cities, though some come from rural backgrounds. There are dropouts from the universities and relatively ‘straight’ walks of life and a few old beatniks. As I explored the evolving situations, certain patterns and themes unfolded. There seemed to be a rite of passage from innocence to experience, and a development away from the image of the hippie toward older American archetypes like the pioneer and the independent yeoman farmer.  Some might look upon this as just a photo collection of hippies. While it’s true that the pictures reflect the style and décor of a particular moment which is already passing, what interested me more was that the adventure I depict is part of a timeless movement, the perennial attempt of human beings to renew the pattern of their lives. My subjects are trying, with varying degrees of seriousness, to develop a viable way of life outside our urban technological complex, drawing whatever resources they can muster from our common past and disintegrating culture. [Italics mine]   My own role was as much that of a participant as an observer. I came to NM with much the same motives as the people I photographed. In almost every case a certain bond of friendship or intimacy was established before I began working. The New Settlers is part family album, part document, part myth. I consider it as much a collective expression as my own work. [Perhaps these are the first contemporary Green Pioneers!] Chicken Tails 01/27/2010
Chicken Tales...or Tails...or... Some (really lame) Gothic Humour! Paradigms and Poultry 05/29/2009
What's also really wonderful to see is the country life reaching the cities and suburbs with so many ingenious and old-fashioned-made-new-again ideas! One of my absolute favorites in 'suburban homestead style' is Patti Merino...The Garden Girl...who's taken her home in Boston suburbia to all new green levels turning it into her own little farmette in the city. She's produced lots of short video clips on everything from shearing her angora bunny and handspinning the fur into yarn...to 4 season gardening...to a chicken tractor over raised beds...to vertical gardening...to living with small livestock...to much much more...all in her own backyard! Also see her fresh from the garden recipes! She's very upbeat and her enthusiasm and concepts are contagious! I promise you...you'll love her!! Another great find along these lines are the Poultry People in the UK. The video above is one of their chicken ark designs that you've just got to check out! It honestly can be this simple! They obviously enjoy their chickens, too, with quirky videos on the 'chicken life'...here below Chicken Meets Fox...quite humorous! Oh and you'll get a kick out of this one, too... Once you're done with the chuckling...or chu, chuk, chukking...notice how they've actually constructed this one: A triangle with roosts and metal roof. Gotta love that little heart, too! Cagey Ideas 10/05/2008
  One of our fair-weather projects was to get the bunny cage expanded and make it a little easier for the kiddos to access and clean. Andrew used cedar posts with fencing on the ground (to prevent digging) as well as around and above. The board top from the old cage now slides over half of the new cage. It's very solid and the children have spent way more time with the bunnies now that they're easier to get to!       We happened upon the idea for using the cedar posts a.) because we had a bunch, and b.) because our friends and neighbors have used them for their cages with nice success. For example, the Meres have tried a variety of cage ideas...  They used branches to create the posts for the turkey cage then added the leafy limbs on top...   And used the lightweight pvc pipe idea for a chicken tractor...   They've now decided to majorly upgrade and enlarge the chicken coop using very large tall cedar posts along with a spacious new adjoining chicken house that has some nice features as well.  The door they're using was an extra one they had in their shed. Now painted a dark blue, it looks great! The wooden screen door will be used to enter the coop area - another advantage of the tall posts. Steve put a low, horizontal pull-up door along the lower half of the chicken house opening to where the nesting boxes are situated, so that their little ones could easily get to the eggs without having to actually go inside - we all know how messy chicken houses are! They even landed the wooden nesting boxes for free at a yard sale this summer. With a few adjustments they fit in perfectly! Now Karyn feels that all she lacks is a nice birch-branch wreath to bedeck the wall or door of their new coop. We'll have to remedy that quick! I'll give you the full tour when it's completed. Update on Our Log Home 08/24/2008
 Almost to the top...    We've continued to have good weather and have also moved forward with the log raising. These are some of the steps involved in getting these hefty logs up where we want them. As you can see in the above photo, they tie a rope to the log and drag it from the pile with the truck. Most of the pulling is done with this old pickup truck!  Here it comes off the pile...   Now the other side is lifted up--sliding up the board like a vertical ramp.  The board pops up a bit when the log reaches the top but it's now in place. Once again, all the pulling is done with the truck--and of course the series of pulleys in place on the lifting poles.  Now it's time to drill the holes and pound in the re-bar spikes.  Here they decided to try lifting both ends at once...      Here are some close-ups of the logs...you can see the re-bar spikes in between in the gaps between the logs. Eventually, we'll put chinking in these gaps with a cement mixture and insulation.  I put my little hand up there to try to give you somewhat of a perspective of the size of the logs. They're not huge logs but they're definitely nice sized logs...and would hurt if they fell on your toe. We're now at about 6 feet...only about 10 more feet to go! Progress on Our Log Home 08/19/2008
   Our summer has been on the rainy, drizzly side plus the daily distractions (like making a living) just manage to keep getting in the way, so we've been somewhat hindered in productive progress on our log home. However, the sun has been out in full force, we're caught up on most of our other obligations--and we have my parents from TX up here visiting who are ready and willing to help! So the past 2 or 3 days have been quite productive--finally!     And this is where we ended up the first day.  The next couple of days I was also out there with my mom and the kiddos mowing and clearing out the brush from the front of our land near the drive. We have some lovely small birches and poplar trees coming up and I'd love to accentuate a grove-like appearance with a carpet of grass and perhaps later some wild roses growing along the steep slope up to the road. Sound nice? I also realized that there's a really wonderful massive, low climbing tree perfect for summer adventures--if I could only get to it and clean out all the scraggly limbs and two feet of grass. All in all, we've gotten up 10 logs and the last course has all the holes drilled and most of the re-bar spikes pounded in. We're rainy again today and needed to catch up on some watch work and errands, but are prepared to hit it again tomorrow. I'll be sure to keep you posted and put up more photos!  The Haystack Contraption 07/06/2008
   Our neighbor was telling us that when he was a boy he remembered stackin' up a huge haystack around a pole while he and his siblings stomped it down as they piled it higher and higher. Then they put a tarp over the top of it to keep it dry.   Look at how much hay that hay rake can tote!         Now all we need is a bigger tarp...and about 105 more of these contraptions!  | " Quote "Opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.
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